Archive for the ‘Drift-of-Life’ Category

Pete Dexterâ€™s latest novel tells the tale of Warren â€śSpoonerâ€ť Whitlow, from the moment of his calamitous birth, when he arrives â€śfeet first and the color of eggplant, an umbilical cord looped around his neck, like a little man dropped through a gallows on the way to the worldâ€ť all the way through until his casually accidental death, and all the things that happen in-between. By the time Spooner slips away from life, he has â€śaccumulated titanium rods running down the inside of both femurs, ceramic hips, a small metal plate under his scalp, fourteen implanted teeth, three screws in his bad ankle, one screw in his good ankle, and Jesus only knew how many screws holding his elbow in place.â€ť

In THE FINANCIAL LIVES OF THE POETS, author Jess Walter has created an everyman character with a twist. Forty-six year old newspaper reporter Matt Prior has been laid off from his job. With his severance package running out, panic has set in. Questionable monetary choices, including most notably, Mattâ€™s unsuccessful launch of the website poetfolio.com, which was to give financial advice in verse, but instead ate up their savings before it launched, and his wife Lisaâ€™s brief e-Bay buying spree and a bit of financial juggling with their mortgage, have left the Priors in a home worth less then what they owe on it; a very topical situation.

The main character of this novel, Jeff Attman, is a globe trotting art critic and journalist. But he hates his job, even hates writing, which can pose a problem for a print journalist. He keeps at it because it affords him the opportunity to use an expense account to do what he really loves: drink, take recreational drugs, chase women, drink more, occasionally exercise his rapier wit, use more drugs. You get the idea. He is fun loving and intelligent. He is a kick, the type of guy whose company you would probably enjoy, albeit in limited measures.

For fifty years, John Updike served as our peephole into the sordid affairs of middle-class American suburbia, particularly the angst that, according to him, plagues men at all stages of life. Admirers mourned his loss, wondering who could now possibly serve as our literary guide through terrain that has already been mastered. Author Robert Cohen appears to be rising to the occasion, at least with his newest, bitingly witty novel AMATEUR BARBARIANS.

Book Quote: â€śOn the second floor he paused before turning the key. He had opened his door on other nights to find the apartment ransacked or flooded with raw sewage orâ€”the result, apparently, of an electrical fireâ€”reduced to the struts and wires behind a movie set. But the card-table furniture, cheap stereo, bare bulbs, and […]

Headquarters has decided to shut down the Red Lobster restaurant in a small mall in New Britain, Connecticut. We spend its last twelve hours in it with the restaurant manager, a Latino man named Manny DeLeon, as he struggles to keep his ship afloat just one more time, in the face of an impending New England snowstorm and an unmotivated crew.

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